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Mankiw: Fix Social Security
Greg Mankiw had a great op-ed in yesterday's New York Times.
It is rare that politicians approach that increasingly dreary issue of Social Security. They leave it to the economists. This article as an eloquent plea to politicians to actually DO something about the bloated, broke bureaucracy that IS the Social Security program:
"THE big question for the green-eyeshade crowd is how to pay for these blessings. It is an issue that no presidential candidate has taken up in earnest.
Republican candidates are fond of saying we should cut tax rates because doing so would incentivize more rapid economic growth (true) and raise tax revenue (wishful thinking). But unless we figure out a politically acceptable way to reduce the benefits now promised to future retirees, taxes are going up in the coming decades. The national debate will have to shift from which tax cuts do the most good to which tax increases do the least harm.
Democratic candidates like to talk about expanding the social safety net with universal health insurance. But they blithely ignore the fact that the safety net we already have was bought on credit and that the bill is almost due.
The Democrats claim fiscal responsibility by advocating taxes on the rich, but the numbers don’t back up the rhetoric."
While maintaining an even hand when discussing candidates' policies, Mankiw still finds time to take a well-deserved pot-shot at Hillary:
"The campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, wants to raise income taxes for those making more than $200,000 a year. Even by the campaign’s own reckoning, however, this tax increase would bring in only $52 billion a year — a mere one-third of 1 percent of G.D.P. And if higher taxes on society’s most productive members discourage economic growth, even this tiny number is an overestimate."
I hope that the presidential candidates start talking more about Social Security. It's a real issue, and should be paramount to college students who are heirs to their parents' retirement bills.
-Matt Hittle
Posted at 09:29AM Feb 04, 2008 by College Republicans in Social Security | Comments[0]
